


Sight, Taste

by grainjew



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Sibling Bonding, Tragique, anyways. theyre good and need to have a Bonding Moment over everything that happened this arc, cause the charlotte family is fucked up enough that it may as well be, is it found family even if theyre biologically related, let them be friends!!!!!!!!!, plants my face on the ground. i want my murder siblings content and i want it now, pudding is having a lot of trouble processing the whole thing where katakuri lost a fight, since nobody else was making me my murder siblings content i had to do it myself, spoilers up to basically the end of whole cake island btw!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-24 23:58:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14366532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grainjew/pseuds/grainjew
Summary: In the wake of the Straw Hats' passage, Pudding finds an unexpected source of understanding in her third-eldest brother.“Look,” he said, and then paused, as one of his hands twitched in turn to his pocket and then his scarf, “I’m not— I didn’t come here to accuse you of anything.”“Why areyou here, then?” Pudding took a deep breath. He wouldn’t know about her betrayal. Hecouldn’t.“Straw Hat,” said Katakuri, dropping those two words into the air like they weren’t loaded bullets.





	Sight, Taste

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fallingwish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallingwish/gifts).



_Katakuri was defeated._

Pudding figured she should probably feel bad about how incredulous she was, with how confident Sanji had been in his captain, but. She was a Charlotte, after everything was said and done, no matter that she had essentially betrayed the family today, and to any Charlotte, Brother Katakuri was the closest thing to invincible after Mama herself.

_Katakuri was defeated._

 

Over the next week, as all the chaos of a successful infiltration and invasion by some irrelevant rookies was slowly boxed up and smoothed over, Pudding caught herself staring at Katakuri (how did he _lose_?) with a lack of subtlety comparable to Mama craving treats. Or at least, that’s how it felt when he would turn around and stare right back at her, something unreadable passing over his features.

It was during one of those moments — Katakuri's future-stealing gaze searing across her face like he could see her third eye even behind all the hair, and her betrayal behind all of that — that, in averting her gaze from his face, she spotted a black hat stuffed into one of his pockets, incongruously small against his form. Something about it caught her eye as he turned away, and it was only three entire minutes later that she recognized it as the one Straw Hat had been wearing during the whole wedding fiasco.

...Interesting. Katakuri didn’t keep trophies, and anyways —she reminded herself with a shock that was quickly growing familiar— he was the one defeated this time.

 

Some days later, there was a knock on Pudding’s door.

She tapped her bangs down over her third eye and rubbed at the other two, reassuring herself that she hadn’t been crying. Mask firmly in place, she took a breath and turned away from her hand-mirror towards the door. “Come in!”

The door creaked open and, of all people, _Katakuri_ stepped inside, ducking slightly to fit and shutting it behind himself.

“Brother Katakuri?” asked Pudding. She forced herself to release her grip on the hand-mirror and drop it on the table. Why was he…

“You’ve been acting oddly,” said Katakuri, face impassive.

 _Fuck_. If Katakuri could tell, and he barely knew her… That was bad. But then again, it was Katakuri. Sometimes it seemed like he knew everything, for all that Mama thought that should be Pudding’s role as the three-eyes child. And he had been defeated.

Still, if he had noticed, then others probably had too. She _needed_ to learn to control these mood swings.

She checked to make sure she was still wearing her most innocent, charming smile, hand twitching to the hand-mirror before she stopped it, and said, “What do you mean?”

He just stared at her without speaking, which was completely unfair.

“Don’t bother,” he said eventually, predicting an action she hadn’t even decided on yet.

“ _What ._ ” If he hadn’t been the invincible (not, actually) Brother Katakuri, she would have stabbed him by now.

“You were going to start screaming. It would have been counterproductive.”

Scream? She was going to _punch_ him. She kept her smile on her face, but her hands tightened halfway to fists. Infuriating brother.

“Look,” he said, and then paused, as one of his hands twitched in turn to his pocket and then his scarf, “I’m not— I didn’t come here to accuse you of anything.”

“Why _are_ you here, then?” Pudding took a deep breath. He wouldn’t know about her betrayal. He _couldn’t_. And if he did she could just fix his memories. Well, okay, there was no way she could get the drop on him, but there was definitely some sort of way. He wasn’t invincible. She had proof, he wasn’t. He had been defeated.

“Straw Hat,” said Katakuri, dropping those two words into the air like they weren’t loaded bullets.

Pudding’s mind went blank.

“He said he would be back, someday,” said Katakuri. “I asked, and he said he would come, and defeat our mother.”

A shaky sigh fell out of Pudding’s mouth entirely without permission. “And you think he can?” she said, bitingly sarcastic. Forget her treason, this was another level of. Of something.

“Yes, I do.” Katakuri’s face shifted just slightly into what might have been a smile on someone else. “I would expect nothing else from that man.”

Pudding stared at him, trying to discern some trace of guile, but unlike her Katakuri had always been three kinds of straightforward, as long as she’d known him.

“He has already accomplished the impossible in escaping Totto Land. Why not expect it of him again?”

“And you came here, to tell me this, hoping for it?” Pudding had lost track of her emotions somewhere in all the shock, and her voice had smoothed to a monotone she wasn’t sure she liked the sound of.

“Yes.” He was motionless.

“ _Why_? ” She heard her voice crack partway through the word, the incredulity getting to it.

He still didn’t move. “Sympathy, maybe.” She couldn’t get a read off him. It terrified her.

“That’s—” She shut her mouth and her eyes, trying to process. And then, in an act of the kind of impulse that was becoming alarmingly familiar, Pudding pulled back her bangs and stared directly at Katakuri with all three eyes. "Do you think I'm a monster?"

He looked back at her, meeting her gaze with his normal amount of eyes. Tension crackled, and yet oddly, she couldn't find any disgust in his expression. She steepled her hands, pushing her fingertips into her fingertips like that would somehow release the suspense.

Instead of answering, Katakuri reached up and flung off his scarf. The stitching up the sides of his face connected to a too-wide mouth, a hollow mass of vicious teeth that expanded much too far for comfort as he spoke. "What about me? Am I an abomination?"

 _Oh_.

Pudding schooled her expression back to neutral, a moment too late. She knew Katakuri had seen her second of horrified shock, because she knew now that he had been anticipating the same as she had, staring at her, staring _through_ her and into her future, waiting for the surprise, the disappointment, the contempt.

"I, uh..."

Now that she was past her initial impression, all she could feel was a different sort of shock, a kind of numbing relief that pulled at her eyelids and left her hands falling limp to the table. Katakuri was like her. Invincible, perfect, flawless Brother Katakuri was like her, with a mouth like a gaping wound hidden behind flimsy cloth and all the paranoia of hunted child. Perfect Katakuri was like her.

"He didn't seem to think so," said Katakuri, putting his hand on the pocket with that hat in it. "Straw Hat. Didn't even give me a second glance, just kept trying to surpass me while my own sister mocked me." He ran a hand through his hair, slumping suddenly against the wall.

"Flampé?" said Pudding weakly. Katakuri was _leaning_ on something. He had been defeated, she reminded herself. His mouth is monstrous, he is imperfect. He was defeated.

He nodded, taking out that unassuming black hat finally and looking at it, turning it over in his hands.

Pudding pushed her bangs out of the way again and stared up at him, noting the distorted scarring around his stitching, the lack of laugh lines at the sides of his mouth. He was one of Mama's first children, nearly fifty now. Had he never laughed? "...Sanji," she said, touching next to her third eye tentatively. "I was going to kill him, and he just called _it_ beautiful."

“So that’s what happened,” said Katakuri mildly, like she had just handed him a report instead of the cause of her nearly week-long crisis.

Pudding suppressed the urge to scream.

Instead, she pressed her fingers together again and shut all three of her eyes tight. “I helped them, you know,” she whispered to the darkness behind her eyes, head tilted downwards. “I helped them escape. Sanji and Chiffon and I made the cake as a team.”

There was a brooding, pregnant kind of silence for a moment, and then: “Straw Hat is a Conqueror, of course,” commented Katakuri, sounding slightly distracted. “Flampé tried to interfere with our fight, to rig it against him, so I cooperated with the enemy to knock out my own sister.”

At that, Pudding jerked her head up and stared, eyes wide. “ _You_?”

“She saw my mouth,” said Katakuri, shrugging a little helplessly. “And how much I had come to respect Straw Hat.”

“I… I guess I can’t really speak on the topic, considering my own actions,” said Pudding. She finally let herself reach for the hand-mirror again, hold it up to her face and look at her three eyes, weighing their shape with the merits of kindness and insult.

“Ah,” said Katakuri. “May I borrow that?”

Pudding didn’t look away from her reflection.

“I haven’t looked… I haven’t seen my face in much too long,” he added. Pudding raised her eyes above the mirror’s image to see him reaching out almost hesitantly. “I would like to see if I can understand what Straw Hat saw as insignificant.”

“Oh,” said Pudding. She stood up and walked the few paces over to him, holding it out. “Here, take it.”

“Thank you,” he said softly, plucking it gingerly from her grip.

As he held it up to his face, frowning, Pudding couldn’t help but notice how comically small it looked against his hands— against his fingers, really, as he held it pinched between his right thumb and forefinger and moved it around to try and find the positioning that would let him see as much of his face as possible.

They stood in that moment for some time, until Katakuri finally lowered his arm and looked down at her, a sort of peace having overtaken his face.

“Would you like to join me for my merienda?” he asked, voice in the neighborhood of tentative. “I’m having donuts.” The way his mouth sharpened into a smile had somehow become unthreatening.

Pudding blinked, and then felt a matching smile take shape on her face, a real one this time, terrifying in its sincerity. “I’d love to, Brother Katakuri.”

**Author's Note:**

> callout post for me zephaniah: not everyone has alexithymia, stop writing literally every character as though they have alexithymia just because you do, dumbass
> 
> anyways hmu on tumblr or twitter @grainjew ! i like to talk, like a lot, talking is great actually, especially about special interests, come talk to me


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